Military plans to retrieve Navy pilot killed in 1944

A memorial service was held for the 23-year-old Navy ensign, and official notification was sent to the pilot's heartsick parents in Gary, Ind. And, as happens during wartime, Warnke's squadron members returned to their flight training, rehearsing the same bombing maneuvers that had killed their comrade. A week later, they shipped out to serve in World War II.

Six decades passed.

Because of the crash's remote location, Warnke's Hellcat was left to deteriorate in the tropical heat and rain.

Because of an extraordinary confluence of events, including the fact that Warnke had crashed into what are considered sacred Hawaiian grounds, his remains never were recovered, though they lay within miles of four active military installations where troops are indoctrinated to never willingly leave a fallen comrade behind.

"From that June day in 1944 until now, Harry Warnke has been essentially lost in time," said Colin Perry, a Hawaii aviation historian and retired U.S. Air Force pilot.

This summer that is expected to change. The military is planning to launch a high-tech -- and highly controversial -- forensic mission to recover Warnke's remains and return them to northern Indiana, where a tombstone engraved with his name stands sentry over an empty plot.

On its face, the upcoming recovery mission simply seems to be a long-overdue attempt to bring closure to a family that paid the ultimate price of war -- particularly to an elderly sister who wants nothing more than to see her brother brought home before she dies.

But much more has been revealed during the years of planning Warnke's retrieval from the Hawaiian hills.

Warnke's case has helped bring to light the nearly 3,000 military aircraft that went down in Hawaii with little public knowledge during the 1940s. It has pitted two federal statutes -- one demanding recovery of dead service personnel and one protecting cultural and historic sites -- against one another. And it has exposed the fault lines that exist between native Hawaiians who consider the Koolau Range sacred and the federal government they deeply resent for appropriating miles of prime land for military use in the decades since the attack on Pearl Harbor.

"This story is about a lot more than Harry Warnke," said Mahealani Cypher, a Hawaiian activist who is against the recovery mission. "It is another example of the concerns and traditions of the Hawaiian people being overshadowed by the military and the government."

Understanding how Warnke died in the Koolau Range on the Hawaiian island of Oahu requires a quick history lesson.

After the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, Hawaii became a crucial launching point for U.S. forces in the Pacific theater. Martial law was declared, and much of what happened on the Hawaiian Islands -- including crashes such as Warnke's -- was classified.

Warnke was taken with flying from an early age. He was in ROTC and belonged to a local flying club founded by young men eager to be military pilots. After college, Warnke joined the Navy, and, because of his previous flight training, he was seen as a perfect candidate for bomber duty.

Thousands of young and inexperienced pilots came to Hawaii -- a precarious place to fly because of its steep mountains, windy ravines, low clouds and frequent rain. They crisscrossed the island perfecting bombing runs and dive angles, and by the time the war hit its peak, up to three or four of them were crashing each week. About a third of the crashes were fatal.

The standard military protocol was to send a search party to the crash site to determine the extent of damage and bring out the dead or wounded. But Warnke's plane was embedded in a near-impassable ravine. When his commander organized a hasty search of the site, all that was found was one of Warnke's shoes.

The war intervened

Another, more in-depth recovery mission may have been planned, but the war intervened. Warnke's squadron deployed the following week, with no time to return to the site. Of the 1,000 or so pilots who have died during training exercises in Hawaii, Warnke seems to be the only one -- save for those lost at sea -- whose remains never were recovered despite the fact that the military long knew their location.

"Why some kind of further recovery was not done, we just don't know," said Dr. James Pokines, a forensic anthropologist with the military's Joint POW-MIA Accounting Command. "It was a busy war and he simply got lost in the paperwork."

Warnke's grief-stricken family -- including his only sibling, Myrtle -- was told he had been lost at sea. His parents placed a gravestone, on which they unofficially promoted him from ensign to lieutenant, on the family plot in Westville, Ind. They died never knowing his true fate.